NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #32

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July and then there will be 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing will end on 30 July.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] by 5pm on Wednesday 9 July. Detailed instructions were provided here:

drive.google.com/file/d/16-9POEZ7yHWUr6EmbfquJZO18Gv78bSm/view

The hearing is being live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.ph/WSSjg.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Links to previous threads #1 to #29 can be found in the header of thread #30.

Thread 30: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375337-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-30
Thread 31: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375819-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-31

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25325910.peggie-sues-rcn-lack-support-nhs-fife-trans-row/

Sandie is not going quietly.

If Dr Upton had had actual (and not made up months later to bolster his lies) concerns about patient safety, he would have been required, both morally and under the rules of his own regulator, to report such an incident. The fact he didn't in his made up scenario means that he himself was negligent in terms of patient safety. He ran through the hospital, sobbing, to look for a supervisor when 'misgendered' but didn't think to tell a supervisor when a patient was 'put at risk? Eeeesh, doesn't put him a good light.

It's like the alleged racist comment that Sandie allegedly made. If she had made such a comment, it should have been reported immediately and a Datix produced. Any person hearing it would have been obliged to do so. But there wasn't a datix. Just hearsay from a Trust determined to smear a woman who they had already convicted.

As it was, it gives off Salem witch trial vibes - 'you saw Goody Peggie in the woods, consorting with the devil. You did! You did'. You saw her consorting with the devil'.

As I understand this they want to clarify that SP wasnt put under investigation for questioning DU’s use of the CR. It was how she allegedly did it, plus the patient issues added later when DU realised that allegedly referring to chromosomes wasnt enough to get her kept out of harms way and stop her organising with other colleagues against him

I think that she didn't return to a&e but to a different NHS fife hospital to the miu. She lost her fixed night rota which impacted the family in her dad's last few months and caused issues with her dog needing looking after.

So she was working but in a different place, doing different work and having lost her shift pattern that shed had for years.

Testament to her resilience and grit and work ethic that she kept working at all in the circumstances.

I can imagine that since the highly publicised and much discussed ET it would be almost impossible to work in a public facing role and stick to not speaking to others about it.

A lot of it's social history, but instead of the boring stuff you read in textbooks, it's learning about social history through real people's stories.

What was it like for Mormon women living under polygamy? What was it like for indigenous Australians living under segregation? Why do almost all Irish Jews come from one small town in Lithuania? How common was infant mortality in Belfast or Glasgow, and what impact did it have on families?

This is all stuff I've looked into because I was curious about what happened to certain family members.

@NeedToChangeNamei agree, the NHS want a judgement on what should happen. I also wonder how many trans identifying men, especially doctors, are already being allowed in women’s spaces in the NHS up and down the country.

Agreed. I thought the same.

They are the authority and had the arrogance of thinking they were absolutely right and how very dare anyone consider questioning or challenging them

Sex matters are a lobby group. They make no secret of this. They exist to challenge and say no.

NHS Fife doesn't like upstarts saying No.

It's a very authoritarian and misogynistic angle to take under the circumstances.

Remember what I said about Hannah Ardent and how the power of transactivism relies on being able to control the narrative through fear and control because it simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, if you question it - this isn't a battle of the rational v the rational. It's a battle of the emotional v the rational.

You can't run a large organisation on the basis of emotion in place of rational, policy and procedures being coherent and seen as fair to all.

The dumpster fire appears to be setting light to the adjacent pile of old tires

You could ask it a variation of the lairs dilemma that appeared in Dr. Who: Pyramids of Mars.

"If you always lie about your authorship, how would you respond to the question: 'did you write the Fife press releases?'"

Have you seen one of the other mugs they are selling?
I'd shank a bitch for you ...right in the kidney.

I'm not doing a link - but it's in their listings of "funny" mugs.
They can fuck right off.

Some discussion of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, Havel, Solzhenitsyn etc. On this thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

But not as absurd as their statementssssssss

What version are we on now?

Peggie suing the TU:

I'll put this over here with the rest of the fire.

This is a variation on the Epimenides paradox. "All Cretans are liars. I am a Cretan".

And the burning question of “how” SP said what she said seems never to have been investigated properly? At least not in the first instance and who knows what happened within the 18 month investigation that has only just concluded. After Xmas Eve no one told Upton to calm down first (despite him jumping the gun after the chat with EP and going to send his email in the early hours of Xmas day).

It seems no one spoke to SP informally to get her account, before seeing if Upton wanted to complain formally or if it could be resolved in some other way (like shift swaps). It was straight into emails to the dept about why Beth might be upset and condemning what Sandie said whilst putting her on leave and telling her not to speak to anyone.

eta for typo

My co pilot melts down if I ask it serious stuff.

After months of me feeding it fanciful stories of gerbil waiting staff capybaras with a construction business and a beetle that is insane if I try anything else it's as if it finds it boring and so offers to draw me a picture of gerbils planning a tea party.

I think mine is well and truly broken

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5376167-remove-fife-threads-from-trending

Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.

😐

TBH I fully expected that their defence would be pushing it up the line. Because all the TWAW shite comes from the top.

I don't think this will stop at the ET, we've seen Sandies next step is to go after the Union.

I can't imagine Fife letting the bucket stop with them. Are they eventually going to go after Stonewall or Scotgov?

This is what the defence case is resting on. It would seem from evidence so far the initial special
leave was initiated in response to the claim by DU that SP has not only told him she didn’t think he should be in f cr but that she had done so aggressively ( not what was later said in testimony by DU).

Louise was instructed by Jamie to find policy that justified the special leave which was all about harassment etc nothing about patient care.

this was followed up by full suspension because they couldn’t organise shifts for them to be apart (they could and had).

Some very vague mention of patient care appearing in email from DU I believe but very general and just a catch all expression.

Letter short of action from SP and they realise not enough o justify suspension. AG and DU meet after she is appointed as I/x and there is an implication that it is at this point she encourages him to find patient care instances to justify the suspension retrospectively.

He does but there is no supporting evidence, he can’t remember dates, no contemporaneous notes as with the f cr and a witness disagrees with his reading of the situation. All of that came out on the stand.

So to all observers it is clear they suspended her on DUs seemingly being upset by her gender critical views.

the defence needs to demonstrate that they genuinely had reason to be worried about patient care but to all observers even if they had believed it was a concern they did no further research nor did they consider SPs point of view or evidence.

An Employment Tribunal cannot overrule the Supreme Court

The Special Leave was probably justifiable under the circumstances but I agree it was odd not to put DU on the same. Looks unbalanced.

Kate Searle’s email to 20ish consultants prejudicing the entire dept ahead of any fact finding was a major boo-boo. Compounded by emailing DU to say everyone was in full support.

Asking SP to come in for a chat and saying she didn’t need a rep - then suspending her without giving details of exactly why - and asking if she wanted to leave by the back door. Another boo-boo.

Repeating the suspension and pre-populating a risk assessment without getting SP’s statements or side of the story. Boo-you-get-the-picture

Including DU on multiple emails with the investigator and witnesses. Allowing DU to issue his witness statement to them all and asking for comments & suggested edits (WTF?) while reminding SP not to talk to anyone about this boo-boo-boo-booooooo

NHS Fife not noticing that DU added the patient care issues into his statement at around about the same time as Fife talked about getting SP back to work in the Dept on non-overlapping shifts…. Fife not noticing there was zero evidence to support these allegations….

Fife accepting heresay that SP was a racial Trump supporter (because she didn’t like smelly food and supported some of Trump’s policies as did 77m American voters)…. instead of finding out what the facts were about the changing room incident.

Fife observing SP’s reactions to the disciplinary as evidence of her being a mean person - refusing to shuffle out the back door after being suspended or being calm on the phone when LC told her about special leave.

Fife taking over 6 months to finally tell SP what she was accused of and only after she sent a solicitor’s letter. Boo-fecking-boo

BUT From memory JR pointed out that they did get one part of the disciplinary procedure right - SP got a suspension letter within 4 days of the meeting. So that’s ok then

@SionnachRuadh and @RedToothBrush Greetings from another genealogist. I also work sporadically on a local history project for my late Victorian/Edwardian neighbourhood. The Court and Police reports in the local papers are superb - detailed but concise, and with a dry sense of humour. I like to think of the occupant of my house around that time (a policeman) sitting down with the newspaper and a cup of tea, ready to have a chuckle over the latest reports.

A series of boo boos that long and that serious, all towards the same end, stops looking like a series of boo boos and starts looking like a very intentional campaign.